London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

Education ministers must be longing for the release of A-level results this week. Whatever the story of Alevels is, it will divert attention from the chaos that has surrounded the marking of Sats this summer. Which will be a pity. Because the Sats debacle isn't some isolated problem with a marking firm that can't cope. It's a stark illustration of just how an overloaded and pointless testing system is finally collapsing under its own weight.

The scene could have come straight from a spy film. At a Japanese bar in North-West London I waited for Ken to arrive. He was, we suspected, a double agent masquerading as a climate-action activist while passing on valuable information about our group, Plane Stupid, to the aviation industry.

THE stars are out for the centenary edition of Britain's poshest creative writing mag. William Boyd guest-edits, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis provide stories, Derek Mahon and Harold Pinter are on hand with poems.